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Four years, four incredible comebacks

January 12, 2015
<p>Geoff Preston</p>

Geoff Preston

MSU football hasn’t always been at the top of the mountain, they haven’t always been competing for high level bowl games and they haven’t always been able to take on top-five programs.

In fact, it wasn’t very long ago that MSU wasn’t capable of winning a bowl game, and without a trait that head coach Mark Dantonio has talked about over and over again that might still be true.

“It’s a feeling of belief in each other,” he said after the Cotton Bowl win. “We don’t give up on each other. Consequently, they don’t give up in the game.”

Giving up on a big bowl game hasn’t been part of MSU’s identity in the last four years. A senior class that leaves with the most wins in program history also can say that they have had to come from behind in each of the four bowl wins their resume contains.

From being down 16-0 to Georgia in the 2012 Outback Bowl, to being down 13-0 to TCU in the 2012 Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl and a 17-14 deficit in last season’s Rose Bowl one thing has been common: a halftime score that looked less than promising for the Spartans.

In the Cotton Bowl it was a 41-21 margin that made everyone think the game was over, except for the Spartan sideline.

“I think the last three bowl games that we were losing at halftime everyone is counting us out,” senior center Jack Allen said. “It shows that we’re relentless.”

Relentless — it’s become the word that has identified Mark Dantonio and the Spartans over the past few seasons, not just in bowl games but in the regular season as well.

It’s something not a lot of programs have, and it’s something that is essential for sustained success. While X’s and O’s are as important as anything, winning and losing can many times be determined by what is going on between someone’s ears. There is a certified power to looking back at a resume and knowing you have come back before and can do it again.

Many people have questioned MSU’s status as an elite football program in the last few seasons. While not being a traditional power, they have had as much success of the past half decade as anyone in the Big Ten.

I don’t know if MSU is an elite power, but I know that the tenacity they have shown on the brightest stages is the piece that is missing for many programs. Following the Cotton Bowl win, Oregon and Florida State played in the game MSU won last season, and in the Rose Bowl, Florida State showed that for every athlete they have that might be faster than a Big Ten athlete they lacked what a team like MSU might have in mental toughness. In a 59-20 rout many Oregon players said Florida State just gave up.

As we’ve seen, “just giving up” isn’t part of the dialogue at MSU. Not under Mark Dantonio.

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